Leo on Competitions

Strategy

My most used strategy tool is the Strategy Map. In his Competitive Strategy book, Michael Porter describes them in his chapter on structural analysis within industries. He defines Strategic Groups as laid out or organized by strategic dimensions. This is my version of it and how I use it.

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Michael Porter is considered the father of Corporate Strategy, by many. He is a pioneer. Although he is well known for his Porter’s Five forces analysis framework, it is his Four Corners model the one I find most helpful in determining what to do, which actions to take. In Competitive Intelligence, this is considered an essential tool for early warning.

The Four Corners model is a predictive tool that helps in determining a competitor’s course of action, by looking at the firms motivations and actions. It is by adding the perspective of motivations in the form of values, culture, mindset, and self-reflection, what makes it powerful in the most likely future strategy of a player.

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Chaos is the science of surprises, of the nonlinear, of the unpredictable. Expect the unexpected. While most traditional science deals with some approach to try to predict phenomena, Chaos Theory deals with nonlinear things that are effectively impossible to predict or control. e.g. weather, the stock market, company culture.

Competitive Strategy and Competitive Intelligence are disciplines that can be confused as being constantly trying to predict next steps, therefore considered a traditional science. Like a Chess Master trying to predict the next moves of his opponent, in order to prevent him from gaining an advantage.

But how do we try to predict, when there is chaos? Simple answer, we can’t, but we can look for beauty (i.e. patterns) in chaos.

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In times of recession and economic hardship, the natural tendency of companies is to look to retain customers as much as possible. This can bleed into other functions, such as when competing, let’s be defensive. Although business is not soccer (i.e. infinite game vs finite game), there’s some thought provoking analysis we can draw, by seeing what the FIFA World Cup in Qatar is showing about the importance of defense.

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Most recently I've been trying to generate a Competitive Intelligence dashboard. In it, we want to provide dynamically and manually updated info on the competitive intelligence services of the team. As such, the controversial SWOT analysis was brought up as an option. Some people mentioned a TOWS analysis, and the battle of acronyms started. I then set myself to analyze: are these really useful and what's the difference?

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